GOVERNOR LETCHER'S MESSAGE, 1861

On the 7th of January, 1861, her General Assembly was called in extra session. Governor Letcher's message set forth the dangers and problems which confronted the state and nation. "The condition of our country at this time," he declared, "excites the most serious fears for the perpetuation of the Union.... Surely no people have been blessed as we have been, and it is melancholy to think that all is now about to be sacrificed on the Altar of Passion. If the judgments of men were consulted, if the admonitions of their consciences were respected, the Union would yet be saved from overthrow."

While thus expressing devotion to the Union, he yet proclaimed his belief in the legal right of secession. He deplored the precipitate action of South Carolina, declaring that in a movement "involving consequences so serious to all the slaveholding states, no one state should have ventured to move without first having given timely notice to the others of her purpose." He reviewed at length the action of that great element of the Northern people, which, for years, had been unceasing in their assaults upon the constitutional rights of the South on the questions growing out of the existence of slavery. He alluded to the recent messages of the Governors of South Carolina and Mississippi in which the Border States were referred to in no over-friendly terms, and with suggestions of legislative enactments hostile to their interests. "While disavowing," he declared, "any unkind feeling toward South Carolina and Mississippi, I must still say that I will resist the coercion of Virginia in the adoption of a line of policy whenever the attempt is made by Northern or Southern States." He expressed his opposition to the plan for calling a state convention at that time, suggesting that instead the General Assembly should appoint commissioners to visit the Legislatures of such Northern States as had passed laws repugnant to the Federal Constitution, and respectfully urge their immediate repeal; and that in like manner commissioners be sent to the Legislatures of the slaveholding states to ascertain the extent and character of their demands and the action deemed necessary for the protection of their rights and interests.[[356]]

ACTION OF VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE, 1861

The General Assembly thereupon adopted a series of resolutions inviting all such states of the Union "as are willing to unite with Virginia in an earnest effort to adjust the present unhappy controversies ... to appoint commissioners to meet on the fourth day of February next, in the City of Washington, similar commissioners appointed by Virginia." The resolutions also provided for the immediate appointment of Ex-President John Tyler as a Commissioner to the President of the United States, and Judge John Robertson as a Commissioner to the State of South Carolina and to any other state that had seceded or might secede, to urge upon them to abstain from any and all acts calculated to produce a collision of arms between such states and the government of the United States, pending the proceedings contemplated by the General Assembly of Virginia.

Ex-President John Tyler, William C. Rives, Judge John W. Brokenbrough, George W. Summers and James A. Seddon were appointed Commissioners from Virginia to the Washington Conference—which became known in history as the Peace Conference.

The sentiments which prompted this movement are doubtless truly expressed in the preamble to the resolutions which declares:

"Whereas, it is the deliberate opinion of the General Assembly of Virginia that unless the unhappy controversy which now divides the states of this Confederacy shall be satisfactorily adjusted, a permanent dissolution of the Union is inevitable, and the General Assembly is desirous of employing every reasonable means to avert so dire a calamity," etc.

Both Houses of the General Assembly, however, adopted by practically unanimous votes resolutions declaring that the Union, having been formed by the consent of the states, it was repugnant to Republican institutions to maintain it by force; that the government of the Union had no right to make war upon "any of the states which had been its constituent members"; and that with respect to states which have withdrawn or may withdraw from the Union, "we are unalterably opposed to any attempt on the part of the Federal Government to coerce the same into reunion or submission and that we will resist the same by all means in our power."[[357]]

THE PEACE CONFERENCE AT WASHINGTON